This invention relates generally to the game of golf and, more particularly, to a system and associated method for improving one's golf swing.
The golf swing is a simple appearing move to those who have never attempted same. In spite of all the advances in golf clubs and balls, the handicap of the average golfer in the United States has not improved by a single stroke in the last 40 years. It is apparent that truly productive advances in proficiency in the sport must come from better instruction and training. The well-executed golf swing is a carefully timed kinematic sequence of 235 muscles moving 108 bones connected by eight 360 degree joints, thirty-four 180 degree joints and four 90 degree joints trying to control an asymmetrical club head attached to a long flexible shaft in an attempt to hit a small spherical ball at tolerances closer than ½ inch in three-dimensional space at sufficient force to propel aforementioned ball further than one could achieve by simply throwing it. The golf swing can be broken down into a series of problems, the solutions to which on a consistent basis result in a correct and efficient golf swing.
The golf club consists of a club head connected to a shaft which is held by the golfer's hands at the end or grip portion and is swung in a generally circular motion around the golfer's body to strike the golf ball at the low point of the swing. If the golfer had only one pivot point to the ground and only one series of levers that attached to the club shaft (one leg from ground to torso and one hand, arm from torso to club) the golf swing would be far easier to understand and perhaps to repeat, albeit with a loss of power. When analyzing the typical golfer however, one must consider that the club is connected to the torso by two hands and two arms. Additionally, the connection of the torso to the ground is through two legs. While the arms still move the club head in an arcuate path around the golfer's body, this path is far from perfectly circular due to the fact that the golfer's center of gravity shifts from approximately center of the feet to the right foot and right side on the backswing and back through center and onto the left side during the downswing and follow through. This creates a corresponding shift in the epicenter of the arms, hands, shaft, and club head during the swing. In addition, the two hands, two arms model does not provide for swinging the club back and through at full arm extension at all times during the swing but, rather shares the fully extended hands, arm lever on the backswing using the left hand to arm to shoulder pivot on the backswing and moves this hands, arm, shoulder pivot to the right hand, arm, and shoulder gradually on the downswing and follow through.
This complex shifting of the golfer's weight and, hence, pivot of the torso, leg, and ground combined with the shifting pivot points of the hands, arms, shoulder, and torso during the swing correspondingly shifts the epicenter of the arcuate motion of the club head. The hands allow both a hinging of approximately 90 degrees away from the target on the backswing and 90 degrees toward the target on the down swing and follow through. Finally, the hands also concomitantly allow the club shaft to rotate along its longitudinal axis clockwise approximately 90 degrees on the backswing and thereafter 180 degrees counterclockwise through the downswing and follow through. Because the arms also move up as they move around the body to swing the club, the shaft cannot stay on a single plane as it moves around and back through. Rather, the shaft must at all points in the swing follow a series of constantly changing planes which are each parallel to the original plane of the shaft where the golfer initially addresses the ball. Finally, in the well-executed swing, a sequential kinematic acceleration and deceleration of the legs followed by the torso, arms and hands eventually lead to maximum acceleration of the club head at the bottom of the swing for ball impact.
There are numerous prior art swing trainers, devices or systems and many use some variation of a track to help the golf golfer learn the path of the golf club during a swing. Unfortunately, the well-executed golf swing does not follow a single plane or path and training devices or systems using fixed tracks alone fail to provide the progressively higher and lower, but generally parallel, planes required in the efficient and correct path of the golf club shaft.
Stationary single track swing trainers in the prior art fail to properly duplicate the above-described intricate movements of a proper golf swing and fail to allow for the additional linear motion and the correspondingly changing epicenter of the arcuate path as well as the continuously changing, but parallel planes, the shaft must follow as the club is swung back and up, forward and down and finally, forward and up.